The Mancave Nano Peninsula

[Kongar]

One year and a few months in. Many times on this journey, I was ready to throw in the towel. Today, was NOT one of those days. Couldn’t be happier with my tank right now, and it’s turning into something I’m proud of.

So many updates this week.
New Kamoer X1 pump auto dosing all for reef. Works pretty good, exit tube gets calcified and plugs up - probably something you all deal with.

I also mixed my own All for Reef today. Super easy, cheaper, and most importantly - in stock!

New corals! I’m full now. Doesn’t look like I’ll be buying anymore unless I kill something or I upgrade. New battlebox from battlecorals, awesome stuff.

My camera skills suck - they look so much better in person.

I had to put up some walls to reign in the leptastrea

Check out this hammer - it’s turning into one cool mottled green and purple bugger. $20 lfs, turning into one of my favorites.

My mushroom split and started roaming the tank. Gave them a new rock all to themselves, they seem happy. Candy cane is growing good too. Also added a pink leptoseris but the colors are garbage in the photo. But he’s screaming pink.

Oh what else? How about my dragon soul which has split into two heads now. Also my first coral - my elegance. Taking over the whole tank. He’s eating in this pic - there was a giant piece of shrimp he caught and is folding up to eat.

Full tank shot?

Parameters are on point, no signs of dinos for a few months. I can even mess with my sand and they don’t come back. Phosphates are a little high - ~.06 but good enough for year one. Running a little gfo in a bag and switched to exclusively Rods food. That got things down from about .18 so progress there I’m happy with.

Big water change today, acros are encrusting on the rocks, fish are happy, in a good spot! Thanks for all the help here! I’m doing it!

 

[Kongar]

Sept 14, 2021. 1 year 5 months in.

Let's start with some changes. First and foremost - pests and algae! First up we have bryopsis, sea lettuce, and bubble algae galore. Note the dramatic change from my prior posting in July. It's not dinos - that seems to be history at this point - so I'll deal with it. I'm not sure where the bryopsis or bubble algae came from - I never saw any on my frags, but here we are.

Also, rather annoyingly, I seem to have also picked up vermetid snails =\ I went through a lot of immaturity during the first year due to using dry rock - all in an effort to avoid pests - yet here we are with pests. If and when I ever start up another tank - it'll be with live rock from the get go. Pests seem to be unavoidable (at least for me) so ya, live rock from now on.

So what am I doing about it? I think the fundamental problem here is my sand bed. 1. it's too deep. I put the entire bag into a 20G tank, and I probably should have used only about half of it. 2. even though I clean it weekly, it's a toilet for my tank. It's gross, brown, poop filled, and not clean.

My daughter went off to college (/yay and /sad), and one of the presents she left behind was her two guppies. They were in a little 3G cube. It was always gross. Now I take care of it for her. Well, I moved them into a bigger 10G freshwater tank, and ditched the gravel for some potted plants. After taking care of it for a few weeks, I've come to a conclusion - Bare bottoms are simply awesome. It's a MILLION times easier to keep things pristine in the guppy tank.

This of course got my wheels spinning, and boom - here I am in the process of removing all my sand in my reef tank!

If you compare to prior photos, you'll see I got probably 1/3 of the sand out in last week's water change. There's undisturbed sand against the back wall, and I plan on taking this somewhat slow. I figure I'll have the majority of it out in a month. So far, no effect whatsoever. Parameters are stable, corals happy. Nassarius snails aren't going to like this - we'll see how that goes. Worst case I'll rehome them, but I'm hoping they'll adjust to not having sand.

You'll also notice under the blue/green chalice - that puff of hair algae is actually my new tuxedo urchin. He's doing a bang up job working on the rocks. You can see the patches of bare rock he's 100% cleaned - algae, coraline, and all. My new favorite critter! Here he is when I first put him in.

My corals are growing like weeds. I lost a few acros a few weeks back - never really understood why. But the rest are doing ok and growing fast. My euphyllia are all getting big. Here's the dragon soul and hammer about halfway extended (morning shot - they usually puff up about twice this size).

My blasto is having babies - see them under there!

My leptastrea and one of my acros are fighting each other for space. The leptasrea is a weed TBH. Not sure I'd have put it in there if I knew how much it spread...

Other than that, not much going on. The biggest things are the algae outbreak, removing the sand (which I think will allow me to reposition the powerhead and keep things cleaner - hopefully addressing the algae issue), and my tuxedo urchin who is my new favorite.

Thanks for letting me share!

 

[Aqua Man]

so I'll deal with it. I'm not sure where the bryopsis or bubble algae came from - I never saw any on my frags, but here we are.

Ahhh yeah I wasn’t able to keep out pests either!! It’s ok, it’s just something we get to overcome and will make us better reefers!
Are you running a lot of red on your primes? Algae loves red light.

new tuxedo urchin. He's doing a bang up job working on the rocks. You can see the patches of bare rock he's 100% cleaned - algae, coraline, and all. My new favorite critter! Here he is when I first put him in

Nice! I employed a pencil urchin to do a lot of heavy eating when I was battling turf algae. Had to give him back to the pet store because he did a fantastic job and was running out of food.

This of course got my wheels spinning, and boom - here I am in the process of removing all my sand in my reef tank!

Just be prepared to SEE the detritus that was once hidden by the sand. If the flow is right, you can get it to pile up behind a rock out of sight until water change.
Once coralline covers the bottom pane, won’t be as noticeable. I started with sand and removed it later like you and never looked back!

My corals are growing like weeds.

Yes they are! Congrats! Looking good.

 

[zuri]

I would drop in some Reeffluxhd (fluconazole) will take care of the bryopsis an prob the macros aswell 3 weeks all gone

 

[Kongar]

Are you running a lot of red on your primes? Algae loves red light.

Just be prepared to SEE the detritus that was once hidden by the sand.

Yes they are! Congrats! Looking good.

Barely any red at all. I’m running the brs spectrum for these lights and I want to say the reds are less than 3%

I’m 100% ok seeing the detritus. Then I can get it out of the tank!

Thanks for the compliment. It could be better for sure, but it’s a journey, not a destination. I’m just happy to have some stability and coral growth tbh. It was a tough first year with the dinos. The vermetid snails scare me a bit, but other than that - everything seems manageable now.

 

[Kongar]

I would drop in some Reeffluxhd (fluconazole) will take care of the bryopsis an prob the macros aswell 3 weeks all gone

Maybe someday. Right now I’m going to be patient. Work on balancing nutrients and seeing if that urchin makes a dent in it. I figure if nothing else, he’s pretty happy ripping it all off the rocks and wearing the algae as a hat. Saves me scrubbing, and it eventually ends up in the filter floss. He might actually be eating it all faster than it grows - which is fine by me. I’ll supplement the food. If that leads to higher nutrients, it’s ez for me to do bigger/more frequent water changes since it’s such a small tank.

 

[zuri]

U won't find balance with bryopsis. Infact depending on the type you have it could be pulling right from the ammonia column starving bacteria. Bryopsis can do funky things

 

[Kongar]

9/27/21

Hello all,

Pretty good couple of weeks since my last update. I'm not without my issues, but things are generally good.

Anyway, the update a few weeks ago was this: "I'm getting a massive alage outbreak, and I'm removing my sand." Take a peek at a video from today to see some progress on the tank.



I did quite a bit of cleaning this weekend and it shows. I've gotten most of the sand out. My nassarius snails don't seem to care all that much. They just hide in the shade of the rocks. So that's going good.

Algae wise - I went to town with a toothbrush and picked off as much as I could with my fingers. I got rid of most of it manually, but it grows back pretty quick. I cleaned out the back chambers really good, and I'm hoping the removal of the sand will help me keep things cleaner. So far my nutrient levels haven't moved, but I'm removing quite a bit of brown gunky sand - that should help (maybe I'm wrong). The bryopsis is also growing so fast week to week that it's blocking light and ticking off my corals. So I took Zuri's advice and hit it with a dose of reef flux yesterday. I know algae will be a thing until I find nutrient balance - but if I can get rid of the bryopsis and just deal with hair/bubble/ulva, I'll be happier.

My elegance coral wasn't too happy with me. It's honestly the first time it's been unhappy (even during dinos) It used to sprawl out on the sand bed, but now it "hangs over the edge" I wanted to put it flat on the glass bottom, but it was blowing away in the current like a parachute. So I had to weigh it down with a rock, which lifts it up in the air, which means it sort of flops now Took about a week before it opened up fully again, but it appears happier.

Some of my acros are really spreading out (encrusting), but none of them are growing up. I guess that's how it goes for a little while. The red monti digi - I keep breaking the darn thing every time I touch it (accidentally), so now I have three little frags. Pretty resilient stuff, and to be honest - I like the red color. So more is better than not enough. The yellow/green acro and the leptasrea seem to be in trench warfare. Neither is making ground over the other. I guess that's good. I'd prefer the acro kill the leptastrea, but I'll take a stalemate. I'm inclined to just let them fight it out, and only intervene if the acro starts losing.

This vid was taken just shortly after the lights came on, so again, my LPS isn't really puffed up and extended. But they look good and are growing. Torch fully split into 2, the hammer is fully split into 3 heads, and the blasto and acans are sprouting babies like crazy. One of my mushrooms is literally tearing itself in two. I ripped the first one in half accidentally the first time, but this is the first time I've seen one split on it's own.

I've zoomed in on one of the vermetid snails, I've found like 4 of them in the tank. Someday soon I'll crush them/cover their holes with super glue. But they are in tough to reach spots. They don't seem to be multiplying in plague-like proportions, but I'm worried about them in general.

My urchin is still pretty awesome. You can see it loves coraline algae and has cleared off much of the live rock at this point. But it's growing back about as fast as it gets eaten so I don't think the urchin will run out of food. I don't think the urchin is eating the bryopsis/bubble/hair/ulva - but it does rip it out mercilessly. Then it gets worn as a hat for a few days until new pieces are picked up. So it makes for good manual removal in the tank.

My birdsnest that my wife loves so much continues to grow. But for whatever reason, it's a haven for algae. Be it bubble or ulva - algae just grows IN the branches and then it dies. Annoying, but I guess I'll figure it out sooner or later.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by!

 

[Kongar]

1/5/2022

Full tank video


Hello all. It's been a couple of months and I figured I'd update my build thread. Tank is now about 20 months old. In May, it'll hit the 2 year mark. I'm glad to report that it's doing very well. I've made SIGNIFICANT progress in my algae battles, and the tank is mostly devoid of the ugly stuff. There's still a decent amount of bubble algae in there, and it's surprisingly been the hardest to kill off. Bryopsis and ulva had taken over - but two doses of reef flux killed both of them off quickly and without return. Once they were gone, the bubble algae became pretty tough to stay on top of. It choked out and killed a birdsnest that I liked, and that's when I decided to get serious. I started very slowly with dosing Vibrant - 2ml every other week. Two months later, I noticed it had stopped the spread, but wasn't knocking it back - sort of holding the line. So I upped the dosage per the instructions to 2ml every week and I'm three weeks into that. It's now slowly but surely killing back the bubble algae. Once it's gone, I plan on going back to 2ml every other week, and I'll probably dose that forever as maintenance. (I've become a believer that you need something like vibrant in a nano since there aren't utilitarian algae eaters like tangs in there)

I do have a number of new inhabitants. It's not clear where they came from because I haven't added anything in quite some time. But I've seen hair worms, what I think are asterina starfish, hundreds of limpet snails, white sponges all over the place, one feather duster (which someone ate =\ ), and unfortunately hundreds of vermetid snails. Everything in the tank is under control except the vermetid snails. I can't keep up with them and not sure where to go from here. I think I'll try some bumblebee snails, but after that - I'm out of options.

Removing the sand has been good. The nassarius snails don't seem to care, and the tank has been significantly easier to maintain as a result. My corals are all growing and doing well. My fish are all fat and happy. My shrimp and snails are all visibly growing.

Some pics
First up - one of my favorites. My dragon soul torch. It is now 4 heads, and growing quite fast. All it's color has come back with deep purples at the base and bright yellow tips. Some people say LPS don't change colors, but that's not my experience - when stability was poor, this thing was crap brown/purple with almost zero yellow.

Next up is my elegance coral and frogspawn. The elegance is mad today, I have no idea why. Every once and a while it gets ticked off and shrinks up for a day and change, and then a couple of days later it's big and puffy. Can't figure it out. Always eats like a pig and I think it's pretty resilient. The frogspawn is growing amazingly fast. It was barely a frag when I put it in the tank - just a spec. Now it's huge and froggy. It's one the favorites when non reef tank people come to visit. I tell them it's nothing special, but they all love it. /shrug

Zoas are growing fast, and I quite like this hammer. Not as cool as the yellow one I lost about a year ago, but this one is cool enough. My clowns are getting pretty big now too - almost the size of the gramma (who's hiding). This is where they hang out all the time.

All my acros are doing well. They all seem to be growing out and not up - I think you all call this "base-ing out"? Someday they'll grow up I guess. I'm just happy they aren't dead (I've killed more than a few between 0.5-1.5 yrs).

Acans, Favias, and Candy Canes oh my! Also my tuxedo urchin wearing his cowboy hat!

Montis! (I keep breaking the red one and gluing the pieces elsewhere - that one is indestructible. Now I have three of them )

Anyways, thanks for following along and for all the help here. Still loving my nano tank, and having success!

 

[Kongar]

Jan 24th 2022

About three months away from the 2 year mark. Feels like the tank arrived just yesterday, but it was a while ago. When do I stop feeling like a noob?

Anyway, tank is doing pretty good. As far as problems go, I've got two. Bryopsis is stubborn. I've hit it a few times with reef flux and that knocks it back with a hammer - but I keep seeing a strand or two return. Annoying. Vermetid snails also continue to multiply. There's just no way to kill them all - they are so small and they hide in the rock. Thankfully, they don't seem to be bothering anything so I guess I'll just learn to accept them as part of the ecosystem.

I feel like the tank is starting to finally get some wow factor to it. My sps isn't growing up (just basing out), but my LPS are looking great. I'm also having much better results with nutrient control without the sandbed, and the recommended dose of vibrant every week seems to be a good replacement for not having tangs and other algae grazers. I think I've come a long way through many battles, and the tank is enjoyable to look at. Dare I declare success? Always more to do, progress to be made - but I think I finally have a reef tank!

Full tank shots

 

[tinyfellows]

Latest Video - 1/5/22


FTS Jan 24th 2022

Hello all,

Since it seems to be the cool thing to do, I figured I’d start my own build thread. I’m new to reefing, and maybe you all will enjoy coming along for the ride. Hopefully someday in the far flung future, this tank becomes an epic one - let’s see if we can get there.

Let’s start with some goals first. My basement is a mancave. It has this strange half height wall at the bottom of the stairs to the left of the television area. It’s fairly non functional, but it would make a good spot for a peninsula tank.

Here’s a couple of shots of that spot.

A 20 gallon is narrow enough to fit on that wall, so I decided on the IM Nuvo 20 peninsula. I’ll have a nice view from three sides, and the AIO works well since there’s no place underneath for gear. I’m shooting for nice and clean and compact.

Rounding the equipment out for the initial setup:
2 AI prime 16hd lights
2 AI prime flex arms 12 in
Tunze 3155 ATO
Trigger systems 5gal ATO reservoir
Vortech mp10wqd
Cobalt 100W heater
IM nano skimmer
15lbs of reefsaver rock
20lbs of Fijipink caribsea sand
Media basket
HW salt mix
Aquatic life RODI 75gpd
GFCI breaker extension and power strip

I’m also NOT looking for a fish room, full of brute trashcans, waste sinks, and clutter. The goal here is a small nano tank that doesn’t require renovations to the house. I know a lot of people upgrade to bigger tanks down the road, but as of now - I’m pretty sold on staying small. That philosophy drove the aquatic life RODI purchase, and I’m planning on using nothing more than a couple of 5 gallon buckets that can be tucked away in the nearby bathroom closet.

Here are my buckets and salt in their closet.

My mixing station is the shower. Doing my mixing over a drain is great if I forget to turn the water off or spill something (already happened more than once)

Lastly, my RODI unit just gets pulled out of the same closet and screwed into the faucet. It takes me exactly an hour and a half to make 4 gallons of RODI water with this setup, and about 5 min on either end to setup and/or break down.

Next post: the aquascape and cycle.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy my thread - and I hope to demonstrate success with a low maintenance nano reef.
Kongar

Are you happy with this Rodi unit?

 

[Kongar]

Are you happy with this Rodi unit?

I am. Recently I plumbed it into my cold water supply line under the sink. I leave the unit and the hoses underneath. When I want to make water I just pull out the lines and turn a valve.

The unit makes a gallon of water between 20-25 min depending on cartridge age. It always tests clean, and I replace my cartridges on a time basis. They still have some life left in them but I change them anyway. (I make about 7 gallons a week). I order replacement cartridges from amazon and have never had a stock problem. It’s physically compact, makes good water, and I don’t need a larger unit. It’s actually pretty portable if you needed to move it around.

No regrets at all.

 

[Kongar]

March 27th 2022

The tank is really coming along! I’m feeling successful. There have been some battles, but this thing is pretty much on cruise control now. If you’re struggling with your tank - don’t give up and keep learning! It CAN be done

Let’s start with eye candy.
A vid:


Some full tank shots from both sides:

Changes since last time:

1. Pulled the skimmer for good - relying on water changes. Best part of a nano imo - ez to do big water changes.
2. I moved my powerhead. Tucked out of view better, and no danger of sucking in my torch polyps (yes that was becoming an issue)
3. Stopped all algae control reef flux/vibrant once I got the bubble algae and bryopsis dead. I’m hoping I got it all - but you never know with those.
4. I’ve just about gotten all the sand out
5. I moved some corals around - warfare is now breaking out.

Parameters - measured yesterday:
ph 8.2
Alk 9.2
Nitrate 3
Phosphate 0.101
Mg 1360
Ca 440

No losses. A yellow chalice isn’t doing good - I’ll have to move him. Everything else is growing like a weed. My clowns are as big as my gramma now. My urchin continues to be #1 clean up crew member. 2 hermits still kicking, as well as 2 trochus snails. Many limpet snails as well as tons of spaghetti worms. I have completely given up fighting the vermetid snails. They are impossible to keep up with. They don’t bother anything at all so they are now a permanent member of the tank. No new livestock has been added. No changes to lights, or filtration other than pulling the skimmer. 4 gal H2O change weekly, two nano packs of chemipure blue (1 pack changed weekly), 4 teaspoons of gfo in a sock floating in the back. Tank kept at 78 F. I did get an inkbird but it’s not setup yet. Fish are fed rods frozen food. They get TDO pellets if I’m feeling lazy or away (used in an auto feeder).

Let’s have some more eye candy:
How about a top down?

Love the colors on this acan - wish it would grow.

This guy is cool too

Finally staring to grow UP!

Euphillia don’t fight - LIES. Anyone want a free frogspawn?

5 head dragon soul torch

I love this urchin!

Freebie mushrooms taking over the tank

Zoas and a cool blue acro

My awesome hammer - 6 heads

My clowns live in these zoas

Room with a view!

Thanks for reading along and for all those that helped on my journey!

Do I have a reef tank yet that doesn't suck?

 

[Aqua Man]

Thanks for reading along and for all those that helped on my journey!

Do I have a reef tank yet that doesn't suck?

Looks great! Congrats!!

 

[Michael Price]

Im looking at getting a very similar setup. Do you think just one ai prime would support the tank? I don't want sps just softies and a ton of lps.

 

[Kongar]

Yes and no / depends The AI primes are very directional in my opinion. If you drew an inverted V, and made it just a little wide, that's about the light spread. (what's that? Roughly 45 degrees? Let's call it roughly 45 degrees although that might be generous) My lights are a little more than a foot above the tank, and each one covers half the tank. You can actually see the beams of light (the upside down V) if the water is a bit cloudy, and I've got good coverage right now. They run at 65% max power, and that gets me about 250-300 par at the top and about 150-180 on the bottom.

I could move it higher to get a bigger spread, turn the intensity up, and probably get the coverage and par reading for lps and softies. But I'm not sure it'd be enough for SPS unless they were directly underneath the light. I can't say I've seen a lot of "hang on tank" brackets for the AI prime that'll let you get it much higher than 12 inches above the tank though.

You could definitely get away with one, but your corners would be pretty dark. I think two or a different light altogether is the better option though. If I could do it all over again - I'd probably go with a different light. Something that spread the source of the light out more.

For what it's worth - my tank recently crossed the 2 year mark and it's doing well. I'm pretty happy with the equipment and wouldn't change too much:

• I'd probably get a different light even though the AIs are fine.
• I ditched the protein skimmer
• I'd have gotten the nano version of the auto top off (noob mistake)
• I would have used an inkbird on the heater (soon to get installed).

My tank took a beating this past month. I was trying to get a handle on a bubble algae outbreak. I started using vibrant, and it was working well. Then all the hoopla about it being an algecide, so I stopped. I shouldn't have done that - it was working. I switched to brightwell razor, and for whatever reason, my corals did not like that stuff. It seems to have kicked the snot out of the bubble algae, but I lost multiple corals ;\

I love that it's 20 gallons because you just don't need much of anything equipment wise. It's so easy to do a 50% water change, there's really no reason to futz around with anything else. But on the other hand, I hate that it's a 20 gallon. I still haven't quite figured out the CUC and utility fish thing yet. I'd love to have a refugium, or I'd love to have a tang picking at the rocks all day long, but you can't do that in this small tank (why I've been messing around with vibrant and razor). I control my nutrients, and I still have had issues with algae - it's the one thing I haven't quite mastered yet. Nanos are tough to keep, but I'm glad I started with this size - I think it makes you a better reefer, and your noob mistakes aren't as costly

 

[Michael Price]

Yes and no / depends The AI primes are very directional in my opinion. If you drew an inverted V, and made it just a little wide, that's about the light spread. (what's that? Roughly 45 degrees? Let's call it roughly 45 degrees although that might be generous) My lights are a little more than a foot above the tank, and each one covers half the tank. You can actually see the beams of light (the upside down V) if the water is a bit cloudy, and I've got good coverage right now. They run at 65% max power, and that gets me about 250-300 par at the top and about 150-180 on the bottom.

I could move it higher to get a bigger spread, turn the intensity up, and probably get the coverage and par reading for lps and softies. But I'm not sure it'd be enough for SPS unless they were directly underneath the light. I can't say I've seen a lot of "hang on tank" brackets for the AI prime that'll let you get it much higher than 12 inches above the tank though.

You could definitely get away with one, but your corners would be pretty dark. I think two or a different light altogether is the better option though. If I could do it all over again - I'd probably go with a different light. Something that spread the source of the light out more.

For what it's worth - my tank recently crossed the 2 year mark and it's doing well. I'm pretty happy with the equipment and wouldn't change too much:

• I'd probably get a different light even though the AIs are fine.
• I ditched the protein skimmer
• I'd have gotten the nano version of the auto top off (noob mistake)
• I would have used an inkbird on the heater (soon to get installed).

My tank took a beating this past month. I was trying to get a handle on a bubble algae outbreak. I started using vibrant, and it was working well. Then all the hoopla about it being an algecide, so I stopped. I shouldn't have done that - it was working. I switched to brightwell razor, and for whatever reason, my corals did not like that stuff. It seems to have kicked the snot out of the bubble algae, but I lost multiple corals ;\

I love that it's 20 gallons because you just don't need much of anything equipment wise. It's so easy to do a 50% water change, there's really no reason to futz around with anything else. But on the other hand, I hate that it's a 20 gallon. I still haven't quite figured out the CUC and utility fish thing yet. I'd love to have a refugium, or I'd love to have a tang picking at the rocks all day long, but you can't do that in this small tank (why I've been messing around with vibrant and razor). I control my nutrients, and I still have had issues with algae - it's the one thing I haven't quite mastered yet. Nanos are tough to keep, but I'm glad I started with this size - I think it makes you a better reefer, and your noob mistakes aren't as costly

Love your passion and insight, one of the many people that make this hobby so great! Thanks for the information, I appreciate you.

 

[Kongar]

Today I finally used up the big batch of DIY all for reef I made about a year ago. Time to make some more!

Tank is looking good again (finally). No algae, corals are fat, happy, and growing again. I threw the bottle of brightwell razor away, and I have not dosed anything else (vibrant). It seems I’ve gotten the upper hand on algae (for the moment).

 

[emmysnewtank]

Looking good. How much afr do you dose?

 

[Kongar]

Looking good. How much afr do you dose?

I'll have to update again tonight with some new pictures. The tank has now entered ongoing "coral warfare" mode. Everything is growing pretty quickly now, and it consumes a fair amount of trace elements and alk. I dose 10ml of AFR daily, but it's hard to say to say for sure if that's a perfect amount. Reason being, I'm doing 50% water changes every other weekend, and that's a pretty good reset on water parameters if something gets off.

When I was struggling with dinos and whatnot, I'd end up with periods where nothing grew at all. And I'd have to watch the AFR closely because it would cause alk spikes when things stopped growing/consuming alk. And I wasn't even dosing that much then (just like 5ml). But I test, and it holds steady right around 9 dkh, so I've just let it ride.

I think my LPS are going to eventually dominate the tank. My torch is super aggressive - huge sweepers killing stuff left and right. The elegance is just getting huge - it's larger than a softball now, it's killing all it's neighbors. And lastly that darn leptastria, man I wish I hadn't put that in the tank - it's a weed and killing all my acros. Can't get it off the rock either. Aggressive, encrusting, and fastest grower in the tank. I need to consider my options moving forward. 1) rip out all the rock and replace with new rock - only keeping my prized corals, 2) getting a larger tank and finding a home for everything except the mushrooms and leptastria, or 3) just let nature take it's course and see what happens...

I dunno - we'll see. I'll post updated pics tonight.